Billion-dollar project will complement Google's balloons and drones.

Google intends to "spend more than $1 billion on a fleet of satellites to extend Internet access to unwired regions of the globe," the Wall Street Journalreported last night, citing anonymous sources. Google "will start with 180 small, high-capacity satellites orbiting the earth at lower altitudes than traditional satellites, and then could expand."

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Google has been boosting its expertise in this area by hiring people from satellite companies. "Google's satellite venture is led by Greg Wyler, founder of satellite-communications startup O3b Networks Ltd., who recently joined Google with O3b's former chief technology officer," the Journal reported. "Google has also been hiring engineers from satellite company Space Systems/Loral LLC to work on the project."

Google is an investor in O3b, which is putting satellites into orbit 5,000 miles above the Earth, and says it will be able to provide gigabit per second data rates. O3b claims to "deliver latencies faster than long haul fiber with a round trip latency of less than 150 milliseconds."

By comparison, the satellites used by Internet provider HughesNet are 22,000 miles from the ground.

O3b's satellites weigh about 1,500 pounds each, but Google intends to build ones that weigh less than 250 pounds, according to the Journal report. Google's initial fleet of 180 satellites "could be launched for as little as about $600 million," but the project could end up costing up to $3 billion.

While Google declined comment on its satellite plans, the Journal quoted satellite consultant Tim Farrar, who said he "expects Project Loon's balloons eventually to be replaced by Titan's drones. Drones and satellites complement each other, he said, with drones offering better high-capacity service in smaller areas, and satellites offering broader coverage in areas with less demand."

When contacted by Ars, Google said: "We don't have anything to add beyond the following statement, attributable to a Google spokesperson: 'Internet connectivity significantly improves people's lives. Yet two-thirds of the world have no access at all. It's why we're so focused on new technologies—from Project Loon to Titan Aerospace—that have the potential to bring hundreds of millions more people online in the coming years.'"

Makes you wonder what kind of potential revenue they are looking at from internet ads and data brokerage that makes them consider such a plan along with the deployment of almost "free" Fiber internet...

Makes you wonder what kind of potential revenue they are looking at from internet ads and data brokerage that makes them consider such a plan along with the deployment of almost "free" Fiber internet...

At this point, Google's revenue is based on proliferating through every possible area of tech development where other companies have failed to go or to fully explore. Nest, self-driving cars, and glass really have nothing to do with ad revenue (though, to be sure, Google could and will leverage this proliferation is *some* way related to ads.)

If Google's existing revenue structure were failing, a project like this would seem like an attempt to do strange things with the back-end of the internet and with experimental you-are-the-product-for-sale free internet services. Thing is, Google's revenue structure is doing quite nicely, and free internet doesn't *change* the way Google provides ad services--this is more about providing the internet to more people, more of the time, which just means better penetration of their existing services.

If you think of Google the way you think of OTA-broadcasting TV and radio networks, I think it's a lot clearer than if you think of them as data-mining opportunists (even if they are also that.)

So, how will that work? LEO's have fast orbits, and are only visible over any point on earth for a few seconds or maybe a few minutes at best. So, I guess if you have a unit attached to your computer or phone to use these satellites, it will probably be constantly switching from one satellite to another, much like a mobile phone travelling down the Interstate - hence why Google has to launch 180 of them?

Makes you wonder what kind of potential revenue they are looking at from internet ads and data brokerage that makes them consider such a plan along with the deployment of almost "free" Fiber internet...

Well, imagine the profits of the current US ISPs, with basically no competition.

Now imagine being the sole Internet provider for vast areas of the world. Especially in developing countries where the majority of users are on smartphones rather than computers (and who, if they trade up, will probably do so to something cheap like a tablet or chromebook).

So, how will that work? LEO's have fast orbits, and are only visible over any point on earth for a few seconds or maybe a few minutes at best. So, I guess if you have a unit attached to your computer or phone to use these satellites, it will probably be constantly switching from one satellite to another, much like a mobile phone travelling down the Interstate - hence why Google has to launch 180 of them?

So, how will that work? LEO's have fast orbits, and are only visible over any point on earth for a few seconds or maybe a few minutes at best. So, I guess if you have a unit attached to your computer or phone to use these satellites, it will probably be constantly switching from one satellite to another, much like a mobile phone travelling down the Interstate - hence why Google has to launch 180 of them?

5000 miles isn't all that low; it's low compared to satellites in geostationary orbits, but it's a lot higher than the 300 or so miles of true LEO. Satellites will be overhead for hours at a time and won't move all that that quickly.

Think of it as the cheapest way to help further develop the developing world. If poor areas with little infrastructure can get access to the Internet with cheap equipment (phones, tablets, cheap notebooks), powered by solar panels, windmills, small gas generators, etc where necessary (because many places don't have great power distribution grids), now all of a sudden small businesses who are struggling to make it in that situation can do things like processing credit-, debit-, and prepaid- card payments using the Internet and their connected device, which means they might be able to better serve tourists, other businesses, and even whatever people in their area might have access to payment cards.

They'll be able to more easily and cheaply do business online, email with customers, suppliers, etc.

I'm not saying this will solve all the developing world's problems, nor that they don't currently have some options for these (I'm sure even in most developing countries, businesses may have some access to the Internet already, but it might be very expensive relative to their income in local currency).

Bypasses terrestial ISP providers. (Will be interested to see what bandwidth it achieves.)

Replaces traditional terrestrial cell telecos with Sky-VoIP ?

This is more than just airborne internet, this is the next internet and with a sat to phone signal, repressive governments are going to have to work at blocking signals (esp if the phones are switching across frequencies as they switch from one satellite to the next. (This may be another advantage of LEO besides the latency and signal strength benefits.)

I wonder if this will focus on underdeveloped countries only or also on the underdeveloped parts of developed countries, such as USA. I still can't get decent cellular internet access in most places I go to outside of large cities and highways. I'd pay reasonable price for reasonably quick satellite internet that I can have everywhere with me on hikes and bike rides.

So how will this work for uploads? Are people going to have to buy a satellite phone, or some such device? Satellite service is generally one way, down to the user, not up from the user. It's why we don't see much satellite Internet now.

Is google prototyping a way to massively disrupt American Internet monopoly in the third world? Please?

You do realize Google is an American company right? More like Google will be disrupting regional monopolies in developing countries.

Relevance? Google's already disrupting monopoly here where Fiber is being introduced. The tech in question in this article seems to be building off other third world wireless tech Google has worked on in the past. Wifi by balloon, etc.

So how will this work for uploads? Are people going to have to buy a satellite phone, or some such device? Satellite service is generally one way, down to the user, not up from the user. It's why we don't see much satellite Internet now.

Satellites can be bi-directional. The gotcha is that it's like Wi-Fi, half-duplex, so your bandwidth is effectively cut in half.

The future is promising. Gigabit per second communication and data is almost fantasy and science fiction, but it IS coming. I remember my first data connection using my IBM Thinkpad and an Audiovox CDM8150 had a 9 KILOBIT PER SECOND download speed. Five years from now, even a 1Mbps connection will be considered obsolete and antiquated. Using satellites for the internet would possibly get rid of cell towers and copper landlines, but will that affect our data plans? We all want cheaper data but with new technology like satellite internet we will be paying much more. I'd pay more for 1Gbps right now.

So how will this work for uploads? Are people going to have to buy a satellite phone, or some such device? Satellite service is generally one way, down to the user, not up from the user. It's why we don't see much satellite Internet now.

Satellites can be bi-directional. The gotcha is that it's like Wi-Fi, half-duplex, so your bandwidth is effectively cut in half.

Not really. Without a transmitter for that satellite, you can't transmit back. But, imagine hundreds of thousands of simultaneous transmissions to the satellite. They aren't designed for that. And if these are just going to weigh 250 pounds, what kind of receivers will they have?

Makes you wonder what kind of potential revenue they are looking at from internet ads and data brokerage that makes them consider such a plan along with the deployment of almost "free" Fiber internet...

They can also just charge for access.

I wonder what kind of devices is envisioned. Do they want individual devices to talk to the satelites directly, or will it there have to be local relays (perhaps integrated with mobile phone towers).

The future is promising. Gigabit per second communication and data is almost fantasy and science fiction, but it IS coming. I remember my first data connection using my IBM Thinkpad and an Audiovox CDM8150 had a 9 KILOBIT PER SECOND download speed. Five years from now, even a 1Mbps connection will be considered obsolete and antiquated. Using satellites for the internet would possibly get rid of cell towers and copper landlines, but will that affect our data plans? We all want cheaper data but with new technology like satellite internet we will be paying much more. I'd pay more for 1Gbps right now.

Gigabit may seem like a dream now, but it won't be long before it will be as old as 8-track tapes. This plan seems odd to me - once you launch these satellites, you cannot upgrade hardware, therefore they will be unable to keep pace with developments on the ground. They will be obsoleted in relatively short order.

So how will this work for uploads? Are people going to have to buy a satellite phone, or some such device? Satellite service is generally one way, down to the user, not up from the user. It's why we don't see much satellite Internet now.

Satellites can be bi-directional. The gotcha is that it's like Wi-Fi, half-duplex, so your bandwidth is effectively cut in half.

Not really. Without a transmitter for that satellite, you can't transmit back. But, imagine hundreds of thousands of simultaneous transmissions to the satellite. They aren't designed for that. And if these are just going to weigh 250 pounds, what kind of receivers will they have?

I believe these are not meant for individual mobile devices, but for endpoint "stations", much like current Satellites. I think the idea is to avoid having to run Fiber across 3rd world countries. Beam data to an endpoint in a village, and use conventional wired/wireless to connect devices from there. But who knows, maybe Google has some new tech up their sleeves we haven't seen yet.